The Lemon Fool

So what do people thing above Gove's plans for environmental and access subsidies for farmers? Seems to me like a great opportunity.

Well, he's talking the talk. This is the second time he's impressed me in the last couple of weeks, after raising the prospect of reviving something akin to the 1950s clean air acts. Let's see what actually happens.

Still a very big budget for paying landowners and artificially inflating land prices.

Water under the bridge now, but if his predecessors had spent less effort posturing and more on building the right alliances, maybe the CAP of today might look a whole lot more sensible.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/21/waste-cash-leavers-in-out-land-subsidie

A passionate condemnation of the EU 's farm subsidy system and the distortions and environmental damage it has produced from George Monbiot in a 2016 article.
This bit stood out for me

A report by the European court of auditors reveals that the EU has no useful data on farm incomes, and therefore no knowledge of whether farm subsidies serve any social purpose.

colin wrote:

A report by the European court of auditors reveals that the EU has no useful data on farm incomes, and therefore no knowledge of whether farm subsidies serve any social purpose.

Sir Humphrey would be proud of them!

Looking for something positive to say about the CAP ... well, at least it's less fossilized than the Barnett Formula.

I expect Gove (or his successor) will run into trouble when he tries to depart the CAP. The interesting question is not so much what he says now as what we eventually end up with. I'm sure noone intends it, but what if we were to end up with looser environmental regulation (in the name of food security and/or enabling innovation) and rivers as poisoned as they were back in the 70s or thereabouts?

but what if we were to end up with looser environmental regulation (in the name of food security and/or enabling innovation) and rivers as poisoned as they were back in the 70s or thereabouts?

hopefully public outrage will prevent that scenario coming to pass.

colin wrote:

but what if we were to end up with looser environmental regulation (in the name of food security and/or enabling innovation) and rivers as poisoned as they were back in the 70s or thereabouts?

hopefully public outrage will prevent that scenario coming to pass.

There's a time lag between a serious problem and public outrage, and more from public outrage to a solution. We could easily have ten or twenty years of something like that.

Just look at today's wood burners: a problem that was already far bigger than either smokers or diesel when the VW scandal hit the headlines, but is only just now beginning to appear on the political radar.

He doesn't impress me. Wasn't it Gove who tried to get climate change taken off the schools geography curriculum? (And failed.) Mind you, he's done a 180 degree turn now. It'll probably last until the next one.

BJ

UncleEbenezer wrote:

colin wrote:

but what if we were to end up with looser environmental regulation (in the name of food security and/or enabling innovation) and rivers as poisoned as they were back in the 70s or thereabouts?

hopefully public outrage will prevent that scenario coming to pass.

There's a time lag between a serious problem and public outrage, and more from public outrage to a solution. We could easily have ten or twenty years of something like that.

Just look at today's wood burners: a problem that was already far bigger than either smokers or diesel when the VW scandal hit the headlines, but is only just now beginning to appear on the political radar.

There are 3.2mn saunas in Finland, some electric but at least a million or two or so wood fired ones, by the thousands of lakes.

http://kivirannanlomamokit.fi/sites/all/themes/mokki/images/top/kivirannan_lomamokki_tahko_sauna_jarvi.jpg

This is a red line, non-negotiable.